The Council on American Islam Relations (CAIR), the self-appointed spokes-mam for US Muslims has been bandying about a figure of seven million for some time now and this was the figure quoted by Barack Obama in his 2009 Cairo speech to the Islamic world.
The true figure is closer to 2.4 million, as attested by figures here . These figures are from the American Religious Identification Survey, 2008 and the US Census Department, February 2009.
I assume that CAIR and the likes of the Canadian Muslimams use the higher figure because the more the number of Muslims, the greater their political clout. As it is, they punch well above their weight....
